


Descent

by Thistlerose



Category: Gundam Wing
Genre: F/M, Gen, Married Couple, Missing Scene, Shippy Gen, Unreliable Narrator
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-04-11
Updated: 2013-04-11
Packaged: 2017-12-08 05:15:34
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 680
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/757467
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Thistlerose/pseuds/Thistlerose
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Set right before "Endless Waltz."  On his way to meet Dekim Barton and Marie Maia Khushrenada, Chang Wufei has a vision of his long-dead wife.  Written in 2003.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Descent

As Nataku closes in on Colony L3-X18999, I wonder what will happen when I land, when I finally meet the man who first proposed dropping a colony--my colony--on the Earth. I wonder what I will feel. I wonder if I’ll kill him.

It’s strange the way one’s idea of justice changes with time. A year ago I would not have wondered. The weak should not fight, and those who prey upon the weak should not live. Dekim Barton would be dead by my hand. But a year ago I had not yet met Treize Khushrenada, the man who attempted to counter Dekim Barton’s strategy by attacking Colony A0206 with biological weapons. In the end, both men’s schemes came to little. Long Shirin destroyed A0206 before it could be used as a weapon against the Earth, and the only ones to die in Treize’s attack were his own men…and one girl.

I had not wanted to marry Meilan, Long Shirin’s granddaughter. I had not loved her or even liked her very much while we were married. I don’t love her now. But she’s with me right now in the cockpit of the Gundam I named for her. 

I have never been religious. I don’t believe in souls or ghosts. So I can’t explain why, at times, the air in this cockpit seems full of the scent of orange blossoms, sandalwood, cayenne, and gunpowder. Or why there’s sometimes a gentle wind that almost feels like a breath against the back of my neck. 

It may be certain people are simply too strong for death to destroy completely. Long Meilan is as gone from this universe as anyone can be. The field in which I buried her blew up with the rest of the colony, as did all the colony records, so I don’t know if anyone could even prove today that a girl named Long Meilan lived from AC 180 until AC 194. 

Except that I trust my own judgment, and sometimes I do see a wisp of her black hair on the edge of my vision. Or hear her, whispering gentle chidings and playful mockeries in my ear. 

I’m not mad. I know she’s not really there. But memory is strong.

Stronger than anything.

Sometimes I wish I had loved her. Maybe then she wouldn‘t haunt me the way she does. I wouldn’t feel her hands on my neck or taste her breath when I inhale.

Anyway, Treize Khushrenada is dead, too. I killed him, and a few months after I did that, I received a message from a girl claiming to be his daughter, asking me for help. In a few moments I’ll see her face and then I’ll know if Treize is really as gone from this universe as I’d believed. And then maybe I’ll know what to do.

Meilan laughs, or maybe it’s Nataku. Someone laughs at my indecision, at the way I determine justice. But I don’t know any other way. I have no one left to guide me. The colony that raised me is gone, and with it all its tomes of wisdom, all its accomplishments and all its blunders. I am all that is left. A scholar who abandoned his studies to become a warrior. A warrior with no clear enemy anymore.

Meilan asks, as I once asked her, "Why do you fight?"

And I answer, as she once did, "To uphold justice."

"Justice," she scoffs. "Do you really think justice exists?"

"I don’t know," I say. "Even now, I don’t know." She is so real to me now. I take her in my arms as I never did while she lived, and feel her, warm and lissome, sleek as an otter. I bend her back, and press my lips to hers. A fierce kiss from one warrior to another. "We shall see," I breathe, and she smiles, the black hair falling back from her face. "We shall see what happens when I go down there, how I feel. We’ll see what I do. Then we’ll judge."

I descend.

01/23/03


End file.
